


To the Heights

by ivy



Category: Matt Cruse Series - Kenneth Oppel
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2019-01-07 19:30:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12239235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivy/pseuds/ivy
Summary: A new adventure in the Rockies.





	To the Heights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wolfraven80](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfraven80/gifts).



With the first glimmerings of sunrise beginning to show in the sky, I flew westward. 

Below me, the great plains heartland rolled endlessly on, unobscured by cloud. Here and there, revealed in dark lines and darker shapes the new sunlight showed fields divided in settlements, but between them, like a great pale sea, the prairie filled the horizon. In the Control Car, at this hour, we were flying a skeleton crew - especially so, considering the crew roster for this journey. Mr Allen as navigator, Mr Zhu first officer, and I - we were the only ones awake. This wouldn't be a long journey, but I'd already gotten a good sense of my crew's personalities, and neither was talkative in the mornings.

It was shaping up to be another still, cloudless summer day, and the _Mistral_ required very little steering. We'd been coasting at the same altitude for hours. The quietness in the Control Car reminded me of standing watch - the same comfortable silence, but the reassuring feeling of being on duty and alertness. 

"We should see the Rockies soon," said Mr Allen, his hand moving over the chart as he updated our location again. "Heading is still on course."

"Thank you, Mr Allen," I said. I saw Mr Zhu cast a diagnostic eye over the ballast and gas cell boards, then return his attention back to the lightening landscape in front of us. The sky was turning rosy.

By the time we had berthed the _Mistral_ and unloaded her cargo, Kate had organized her crew and was giving a last minute briefing. It was late morning, and not a few of the aeromechanics and ground staff were looking at us with interest. Kate's crew were all wearing enormous backpacks, and two of them were carrying a photography set. The kit had improved in the last few years, and Kate had the best of the travel sized cameras, but they were obvious and unwieldly.

"There's a water supply hooked up in Hangar B," Kate was advising when I walked over. "Oh, are we ready to go?" she said brightly, as she saw me.

"Yes. The crew is all on leave and we have the berth till the thirtieth." The hangar was small and existed mostly for the summer tourist traffic, which had yet to hit the high season. The harbourmaster had been most agreeable. "And there's a couple autos coming around. Said they'd go as far as the trailhead."

Kate nodded. "That's as much as can be expected." She raised her hand, and said louder: "Let's assemble outside. We'll have transport up to the mountains." 

 

The trailhead was at the end of a paved, then gravel, then dirt track. A lonely signpost with Peakline Trail painted in fading letters was dwarfed by the view of the mountain. From a distance as we had motored up, the crown of the mountain was visible, grey rock with striated white snow capping the top, a sharp line where the trees stopped. But at this distance, there was just the pines, thin and tall, and the air was thick with their sharp scent. It was a change from the city, where the gasoline fumes and smoke permeated, and the airship, with the faintest mango smell. I felt like everything was unnaturally clean.

Altogether there were five of us - Kate and I, then Luke, Zachary and Amelie. I'd met only Luke before, and briefly in Lionsgate City, during one of the innumerable presentations Kate had given about the journey. All three were Kate's handpicked zoobiologists - and then there was me.

We started up the trail. Kate was chatting away to Luke, the hiking stick in one hand not impeding her enthusiastic gesturing not at all. 

"Bit of a change of scenery for you, isn't it?" said Zachary, from my left. Dark haired and wiry, he moved with an easy gait that suggested he could climb for hours on end. 

I shrugged my shoulders uncomfortably under the pack. It felt enormous and carried a water, a bedroll, and supplies for a few weeks. It made my spine feel unnaturally straight. "Yeah. Must be an old hat for you though, right?" 

Zachary grinned. "I was born in the mountains. Always saw something new every trip up to the peaks though." 

I'd already heard it all from Kate - there had been funding offered by the Government of Canada for wildlife studies, and Kate had gone after it like anything. This far out west, the mountains had only been sketchily surveyed for a cross-country rail line that had yet to be finished. In the east the line stretched and snaked through the dense cities, carrying the wheat from inland provinces. A smaller line had been proposed in Lionsgate City, to meet somewhere in the middle, but there was no pass yet to cross. Airship flights across the country were popular as a consequence, and I'd flown no mean number of those. Kate was less interested in that, and more interested in the fact that the peaks had been hardly studied. 

Ahead of us the track narrowed to single-file. We walked under the needle-laden branches and brushed up against the rough grey bark. The undergrowth was scant - probably suppressed by trees blocking out most of the light, but brilliantly green moss had spread all over the floor and small leafy plants - I'd have to ask Kate what they were - sprouted irregularly. The tree branches hung with lichen, which gave the whole forest an ancient air. Without thick undergrowth to block my sight, it felt like we could see far in every direction, and we were all alone. My footsteps made quiet crunching sounds through the dropped needles.

The faint trail was cut through by small rivulets at random. I put my hands in the first and jerked them back; the water was like ice. We heard rustling and scattered birdcalls, but mostly it was quiet. 

Kate dropped back to walk with me. She was a little rosy with the exertion and she jabbed at the ground with her walking stick with more vigour than was necessary. We were bringing up the rear, probably because the trail had started to switch-back more vigorously than before and I was starting to feel the effects. 

"What should I be looking for?" I said lightly. 

"Not much, down here. Amelie is planning to take samples of moss, but most of the avian life is too tricky to find here." She gestured at the nearest lodgepole pine, which rose stock straight upwards, most of the needles clustered helpfully at the top of the tree. It would be an interesting job to climb it, for sure. "And most of the life at lower elevations has been studied more thoroughly."

I nodded. "What did you bring?" And as I shifted my own pack, trying to find a comfortable spot, "What did you put in mine?"

"A few specimen jars, Amelie and Zach have the camera, and some more collecting materials in yours," Kate said, managing to look slightly guilty. "They can't be helped. I need to bring in any specimens clean."

I grimaced, remembering the subsequent arguments with the Zoological Society. Hugh Snuffler had had mostly a change of heart after we'd landed back on Earth, but it was uphill and Kate clashed with him still. But they had sponsored her application for this trip, so I supposed they had grudgingly accepted her work.

"What about you?" Kate said in an undertone. "I know I already said this, but you didn't have to come all the way up here. The _Mistral_ is probably feeling lonely, you know."

"I don't mind." And it was true. I knew I could be aloft again - I wasn't wealthy enough to own a ship outright, but my officer rating with being an astralnaut had certainly opened far more doors than I could have imagined. A bird didn't fear heights, and neither did it fear being grounded, with its own wings. "And I'm eager to see what you'll find this time. They always seem to find us instead of the other way around."

Kate laughed. "It might be collecting owl pellets and dissecting them," she said. "Lots of tiny vole skeletons. But I don't know. There's an awful lot of alpine habitat no one's looked at - or they've only hiked up here to draw maps." From one of her many pockets, she pulled out a well-folded map, the edges grimy. 

"Here's the most recent geological survey in Alberta. I had to talk someone into getting me a copy, but this is the most up to date." She handed it to me. Spidery lines marked elevation and shape for much of the southern mountains, but there were whole chunks of the map further north that were practically blank. The peaks had been picked out, but details were sparse. "The treeline's supposed to mark the edge where life's easily lived, but that's just conventional wisdom." She sniffed.

We were squarely in the greyed section of the map. "I take it no one's been here really?" The trail was blazed at irregular intervals, so clearly someone came through. 

"No, not at all. I asked Zachary - you know he's been here since he was tiny. This gets visited by hunters sometimes, but they don't go above the tree line." 

The trail opened up into a clear space, a meadow that stood waist-high with grass. It was even dotted with wildflowers, and the clean mountain sunshine was almost painfully bright after the dimness of the forest. To our right the peak of the mountain loomed, exposed rock. The sides seemed sheer as a fortress's wall to me. Maybe birds nested in there and rode the thermals that formed around the peaks. There was an awful lot to find out. 

I reached out and took Kate's hand. Hers was warm and her grip firm. She grinned at me. "Let's go see what we can find."


End file.
